


The Great Glam Bake Off (Outlaws of Flour). Round one: Cakes

by ermengarde



Category: GlamRPF, gbbo
Genre: M/M, Podfic Available, gbbo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-07
Updated: 2011-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-23 12:32:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ermengarde/pseuds/ermengarde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Glamily do a special of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b013pqnm">The Great British Bake Off</a> for charity (fic assumes you have as much knowledge of this show as Tommy does, which is to say none at all).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Great Glam Bake Off (Outlaws of Flour). Round one: Cakes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sorchasilver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorchasilver/gifts), [Vae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vae/gifts).



> I blame twitter. Mostly because Sorchasilver and Vae live there. I suspect Vae will also be writing a GBBO inspired fic (sorry, I couldn't not write this, Tommy would not shut up) but hers will be better (definitely), longer (probably) and more likely to contain porn (on screen, anyway) - you should absolutely read it when she publishes it.
> 
> This is round one, but the story's self contained, and I may well never write any other rounds so it's not a wip or anything.

Tommy is pretty fucking sure that he didn't sign up for this shit. In fact he's pretty fucking sure that asking him to make anything more complicated than a cup of coffee is asking for serious trouble, but Adam had done that sad face thing and started going on and on and on about how it was for charity and how all the fans were mean to him on twitter if he left Tommy out of things (honestly, it's fucking _ridiculous_ , the fans are, like, a ton meaner to Tommy for just, like, breathing, but Adam knows that Tommy gets a bit protective of his friends and he's totally fucking played Tommy on this one.).

So anyway, he's standing in a fucking tent, in fucking England, wearing a fucking _apron_.

It's got pink flowers on it.

He'd have objected more to the flowers, but Adam grinned so happily when he tied the fucking thing around Tommy's waist, so he got distracted. Tay's wearing this ugly green apron that makes him look like he's undead anyways and at least Tommy's is _pretty_.

The whole thing is fucking ridiculous, _The Great Glam Bake Off_ (seriously, that's getting fucking tired already, glam, glam, glam. Outlaws of Flour or something would be much better), and Tommy's torn between wanting to be eliminated in the first fucking round so he can go to the pub he spotted just down the road, and really wanting to beat Neil (he doesn't really give a fuck about beating people usually, he's a scrawny little fuck and its not like he's big into sports or shit but Neil whined the whole fucking flight over and baiting Neil's, like, one of his favorite things to do so beating him would be kinda awesome).

Everybody's got their own little kitchen area, with all this fancy baking kit in it and a real fucking expensive looking oven, and they've all been given a file full of laminates with recipes for bread and pies and things that Tommy's never fucking heard of. There seem to be two presenter type women (Cam's flirting hardcore with one of them and Tommy's pretty sure that she's responding. That'd be awesome, Cam's awesome and she deserves some classy English tail) and two like, expert judgy kind of people. One of them's about 900, but she's like this kind of baking super-hero or something and Tommy's pretty sure judge Mary will help him out if he does his wide-eyed woobie thing and the other guy's already rolled his eyes at Neil's whining and pointed out that _the only reason real men don't make quiche is because they're incompetent prats who need to posture to make up for their lack of skill_. Neil's sulking and Tommy's decided that judge Paul's possibly awesome.

For the first round they have to make a cake. There are, like, fucking dozens of recipes to choose from and Tommy is having kinda a hard time picking one. They're going to be judged on how the finished thing looks and Paul said that presentation could count for a lot, but he also mentioned that it had to, like, taste good and shit, so Tommy's totally going to go for the easiest looking one and maybe do something fancy with the frosting or something. He figures that not poisoning people is probably his first aim. He's perched up on a stool, worrying at his thumbnail and reading through all the recipes for, like, the fourteenth time when Paul comes up and stands by his shoulder.

"Are you having problems choosing a recipe?"

Tommy nods and takes his thumb out of his mouth. "I don't bake, I don't fucking even boil water mostly, and I don't understand what any of this shit means." He points at a densely typed page that's talking about a fucking _ganache_.

"Okay." Paul nods, gently takes the binder out of Tommy's hands and flips through to a recipe for something called a Victoria Sponge. "Try this one, it's pretty straight forward. When it says to cream, use that bowl" he points "with the electric mixer, and when it says to fold, use a spatula and be gentle so you don't knock the air out of the mixture."

"Uhh."

"Five year olds can make this cake, Tommy, I'm sure you can manage."

There are only, like, six steps in the recipe so there's probably only so far he can fuck it up. He reads it right through, start to finish, and decides to prepare everything first, like greasing up and lining the cake pans and shit, measuring out all the ingredients and turning on the oven so that he doesn't have to worry about doing them when he's actually in the process of fucking baking his cake. He figures he'll work out the filling and frosting shit when it's in the oven, because he can always fill it with cream and pour chocolate over the top or something as long as the cake bit is edible.

 

~~

By the time his cake is in the oven Tommy has flour in his fucking _hair_ and his arm's sore with the tension of fucking folding the ingredients together without knocking out the fucking air. He couldn't see any fucking air _in_ the mixture, but Paul said it would be there, so... He takes a deep breath and tries to centre himself.

Adam's at the kitchen just behind his and he's doing something at the stove, with a bowl over a pan and a big streak of chocolate on his face, Cam's huddled in a corner talking to her new presenter friend, Sue, the other presenter, Mel, is standing between Neil and his oven, trying to stop him from opening it every 3 minutes, Monte's stirring a bowl fiercely and whipping up a cloud of powdered sugar into his beard, Sasha's holding onto her counter and stretching out her hamstring, Isaac's doing something fucking dangerous looking with hot sugar and a drum stick while Paul nods approvingly, Brooke and Terrance are talking to Mary and Tay's doing something in his mixer with the contents of a small brown bottle.

Right, so, he needs something for the filling and something to go on top and they need to be kind of amazing because everyone else's mixtures looked a shit load more complicated than his. Also, if the recipe tells him to do anything other than stir, cream or fold then he's fucked. He tries to think back to birthday cakes and shit he's eaten to get some kind of inspiration. The last time he had cake it was at Adam's birthday and they were stupid cupcake things which totally doesn't fucking help him now. Fuck this. He flips through the recipes until he comes across one for lemon icing that doesn't look too hard (icing's totally like frosting, isn't it? The recipe says it should be spread onto a cake) and he knows he saw something called Lemon Curd in the ingredients cupboard. Lemons are nice, right? He's not fucking making chocolate anything, anyways, everyone else is fucking using it. He stands and bites his lip until Mary comes over.

She bends her head and tries to catch his eye. "Are you planning your icing, Tommy?"

Tommy nods. "I, uhh, I thought this?" He points at the lemon icing recipe.

"You're making a Victoria Sponge, aren't you?"

He nods again and widens his eyes. Old ladies totally fucking love him when he does that shit.

"The lemon icing will be very nice with that, yes."

"And, uhh, I saw, uhh, Lemon, uhh, Curd? In the ingredients cupboard."

Mary smiles at him. "Lovely."

Tommy does an internal cheer; the superhero of cakes totally likes his plan.

~~

Lemon icing is really fucking difficult.

Tommy kind of feels like he's in _Fantasia_ , except instead of buckets and mops, it's bowls and fucking bowls of icing. Getting the consistency right was really fucking hard and then the taste was wrong so he had to add more lemon juice and rind (Paul showed him how to get the rind off, Tommy's totally getting skills), then it was all too wet again so he had to add more powdered sugar and now he has enough that he could probably ice every cake, cookie, table and person in a mile radius. It does taste good though, and his cake's gone cold so he can start assembling it all up, so it's not a total fucking disaster or anything.

Total fucking disasters he's leaving up to Tay.

Poor fucking Tay is weeping in Paul's arms because he tried to move his cake to, like, line up the tiers or some shit (it was supposed to be this incredible multi-level thing with, like, dragons) and half of it fell on the floor. Presenter Mel is kind of lurking at the edge of Tay's kitchen, but Paul's rubbing Tay's back and talking to him quietly, so she's probably not needed.

~~

Who fucking knew that it could legitimately take five hours to make a fucking cake? Bakers totally don't charge enough for their stuff, it's fucking hard work.

Adam goes up first, with a cherry chocolate cake that looks fucking amazing and Mary says has "quite a kick to it", then Sasha with a sweet looking platter of red velvet cupcakes that didn't come from a recipe in the binder that she says are her sister's favorite and Paul says are "nice and moist" which makes her giggle.

Monte's cake is blue, which just looks weird, but then he says that that's Atticus' favorite color and he doesn't really care how he does as long as his son likes it which makes Mary go all dewy eyed. Damn it.

Cam’s made cupcake’s like Sasha’s except hers are chocolate and Paul says they’re more like a muffin (seriously, there’s a difference?) but they look pretty and she’s too busy making eyes at presenter Sue to care much, anyways.

Brooke's cake is a pistachio lemon sponge, which makes Tommy huff a little bit because it's lemon and it looks better than his, but it's, like, got the lemon baked into it so it's not totally the same as his or anything and then Terrance is up with a chocolate cake, kinda like Adam's, but Paul says it's dry which makes Terrance frown. Paul can be a bit mean, even if he helped Tay out.

Neil's cake looks like shit, and Tommy can't actually hide his grin. It's all fallen in in the middle and nobody can stifle their laughter when Mary says it's got a soggy bottom.

Tay's managed to salvage something of his cake - Paul totally helped him, but nobody minds very much because Tay's like, the baby, and he was really fucking upset. He still looks a bit watery now, but Mary says he's got a really light touch and that his ganache (who knew that's how you pronounced it?) is a delight and that seems to cheer him up.

Isaac's made a completely wild looking cake with chocolate frosting and spirals of sugar sticking out of it, kind of like a brown firework and Tommy feels a bit dumb walking up with his plain little cake after that, but Mary smiles at him as she cuts a slice and Paul starts talking about how the crumb is perfect and that while it's a simple recipe, Tommy's technically very good and he's judged the lemon just right. He practically skips when he carries his cake back over to his kitchen after they've judged it.

He's fucking baked a cake and it is fucking fantastic (he cuts a bit for himself and tries it, it really fucking _is_ fantastic. It totally doesn’t taste like he made it at all).

~~

No one - other than maybe Tay - is very surprised when Neil and Terrance are eliminated from the competition for being shit at baking, and they all cheer when Isaac's firework cake wins (Mary says that Adam's was good, but that he was a bit heavy handed with the alcohol, so he's second).

Tommy still secretly thinks that his cake tastes better though, chocolate is totally fucking over rated.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Great Glam Bake Off (Outlaws of Flour)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/672871) by [dapatty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dapatty/pseuds/dapatty)




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